Every organization has a system for managing the content it produces. It may be undocumented and fragmented, with storage and processes determined by individual users; or it may be a full-fledged, highly-integrated component content management system that manages everything from versions, to source and target languages to style sheets. There’s a good chance your organization’s content management system lies somewhere in between. So, before you can decide how you can improve your content management practices and get on the road to implementing or enhancing your content management system solution, you need to assess where your organization stands—what kind of content do you have, where is it located, and how is it currently managed? Answering these critical questions is essential to determining your content maturity.
We’ve developed this content management system maturity model to help you determine how well you manage your content right now. By following it, you’ll be able to evaluate the flexibility and efficiency of your work processes and tools when it comes to content management.
Rank your organization in each area to determine your overall maturity level and identify areas where you or your tools can improve. If you score poorly on flexibility and efficiency, a good consultant can help you move towards maturity. And if your CMS is incapable of some of this functionality, then it may be time to change systems.
This maturity model identifies the maturity of your content management system using three dimensions each of which has some specific criteria:
- Storage
- Efficiency
- Flexibility
The Storage Dimension
In assessing the storage dimension of your content maturity, you first need to identify the locations and formats of your content. Is it stored in local hard drives, network share drives, an existing CMS, or some combination? You will also need to identify the various formats content is stored in, including obsolete or proprietary formats, and which users have access to what content.
When reviewing content storage, inventory or content audit processes should be examined. Do you know what content exists? If you had to find it right now, could you? How are shared locations monitored, and what kind of version control exists? This aspect includes understanding how users link existing content together. If you’ve implemented a CMS, you may have better processes for identifying broken links or managing relative linking (linking not dependent on the physical location of content).
A complete assessment of the storage dimension of your system also includes looking at how you plan for storage capacity and usage. In low maturity organizations, little to no planning is done by content strategist(s), so understanding how to maximize content capacity is often left to the IT team. Higher maturity teams have a system that accommodates reporting on usage and storage so that a content strategist has a better understanding of how usage trends will impact the overall system.
Content Management System Efficiency
Content management systems must encompass the entire content lifecycle, from creation through the distribution and retirement (deletion or permanent archiving), and efficiency in processes is critical. A system that incorporates manual, duplicate or unnecessary processes wastes resources, from the time of the staff assigned to content management, to the technology and tools that must be purchased to support them.
The first of the efficiency criteria is automation. Low maturity organizations have mostly manual processes, requiring multiple steps to initiate, create, review and produce content outputs. Mature organizations automate as many of the processes as possible without sacrificing quality. Organizations at the middle levels typically have begun identifying gaps and bottlenecks in manual processes, and look the technology to help streamline them. As a result, older content is more easily identified, and all content is more findable.
Most organizations find that content translation is a critical factor in achieving their business objectives. In low maturity organizations, translation occurs completely outside of the content management system, with multiple transfers of files (and unstable version control) adding to the risk factors and cost in translations. Mature organizations integrate both processes and technology into the CMS so that translation is managed efficiently as part of the content creation and production workflows.
Consistent branding across all channels for all content epitomizes an organization with a mature content management system. In lower maturity organizations, templates are designed and inconsistently managed by the output file format, and applying consistent branding requires significant rework and testing to accommodate. Well implemented CMS tools allow authors to manage look-and-feel centrally, while applying globally (which incidentally reduces QA resource requirements and subsequent rework).
Flexibility
For most content management and technical communication practitioners, the ideal content management system can easily achieve two objectives: COPE (Create Once-Publish Everywhere) and Custom Content on Demand. The high maturity organization meets these objectives by building maximum flexibility into the system (tools and processes).
Creating custom output in low maturity organizations is typically difficult and time consuming. Authors must take time to locate and copy and paste existing content to a new document, or create the content from scratch if they cannot locate usable existing content. As organizations mature, their CMS tools not only store content centrally in XML format, they provide for easy production of a variety of outputs using the same content.
Use of metadata can streamline production of content (as well as revision and storage). In low maturity organizations, metadata may consist of timestamps and authors, or if additional metadata is used, it’s often limited to specific documents created by authors knowledgeable in structured authoring best practices. As organizations mature, they become proficient in planning and applying metadata consistently across all content, so that it can be used to drive outputs of custom content as needed and make content findable by authors and users alike.
When combined with effective metadata, the application of consistent business rules provides optimal flexibility and consistency of output across channels and on demand. Analyzing business requirements, developing rules around creation, storage and production of content, and integrating those rules into the CMS ensures that your content is performing at the highest level.
Content Management System Maturity Model
We’ve summarized the CMS Maturity Model into the following grid to help you visualize your current processes, and provide starting points for planning to move up to the next level.
Storage | Efficiency | Flexibility
Towards Improving Your Content Management Maturity
As you rank your organization using the matrix above, you may find that your organization crosses some levels. It’s possible to be a mix of Level 1 and Level 2 or a mix of Level 3 and 4, but other combinations would be rare probably because the maturity of the overall organization is an important driver of maturity of systems and processes.
The key to achieving a high rating on the maturity model through efficiency and flexibility is having your content in XML format and stored in a CCMS. Understanding where your organization is in terms of content maturity is the first step towards making the improvements in processes and technology. We encourage you to review and download our tools for selecting a CCMS technology and calculating ROI as part of effort to build a business case for CCMS.
